Same thing with education. The U.S. Dept of Education has been around, in some form or another, since the late 1860's. However, its current manifestation and exploded budget began in 1979. Since 1979, the DoE has continued to spend Billions, while seeing little, if any, progress. We spend more on education than any other individual country in the world. Sweden is always talked about as an example to follow. Forgetting that our demographics are vastly different, the last time I checked, we spent over 6x what Sweden spends on per pupil spending. Funding is definitely not our problem here. It is much, much deeper.

however, since you raised the issue, yes, they were, in their official platform anyway, supportive of those economic safety net issues which form the crux of the present day democratic platform. that said, in actual practice, they wanted (as they had since 1935) to do away with social security. as well, targeting a balanced budget, as a primary policy objective, raises the question of just how sincere they were, regarding their stated support of the social issues. if you're trying to cut gov't spending, while maintaining/increasing defense spending, what programs are going to feel the sharp edge of that knife? hint: it won't be defense spending.